


The Edge of the Unknown

by lonelywalker



Category: Dexter (TV)
Genre: AU, Gen, Serial Killers, season 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-04
Updated: 2011-11-04
Packaged: 2017-10-25 16:52:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/272556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a line, and she's here to draw it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Edge of the Unknown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [liliaeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/liliaeth/gifts).



> Written for the prompt "Dexter, gen, Dexter gets caught, Deb's first confrontation with him after he's arrested".

She wakes up in darkness and silence, breath hot against hotel sheets, blanket packed so tightly around her she has trouble deciding which way might be up.

It’s when she crawls out onto an unfamiliar carpet and blinks at the time on a clock that’s not her own that she remembers. She remembers it all.

Rudy at the marina, charming as all fuck. Doakes ruling the firing range, filling out paperwork as if the keyboard had done him some kind of personal disservice. Christine Hill full of self-pity. Arthur Mitchell’s wife and kids, caught between shock and relief. Number Thirteen masked behind plastic. Dexter…

Dexter.

She makes herself count them. Her fiancé. Her colleague. Her brother. She’s the worst fucking cop in the history of whole goddamn motherfucking _world_.

Yesterday, Angel had bought her a beer she could barely stomach, and told her that none of them had suspected a thing either. They’d all thought, at the very _worst_ , that Dex was a little too committed to his work, but in comparison to Masuka he was clearly the very model of a dedicated forensic scientist and devoted father.

 _Father_.

“Fu-fudging _shit_ ,” she mutters, standing up and wondering how on earth Harrison has been sleeping so soundly. As the world falls apart, he’s still safely under the covers, gripping a stuffed animal. Little fucking angel.

Of course Quinn had made some noises about suspicions he’d always had, but she’d barely paid any attention. Her first instinct had been to deny everything and launch an investigation that would clear Dexter’s name… But the eyewitnesses had been compelling, the forensic evidence indisputable, and Dexter apparently all too willing to confess, with the proviso that Harrison be taken care of by his sister rather than child services.

LaGuerta had been all too happy to use that as an excuse to force her to take some time off that was a suspension in all but name. Matthews had been kinder, but she’d still seen the look in his eyes. The fear.

She hasn’t seen Dexter since they took him to jail. She couldn’t be part of the interrogation, of course, and any conversation had been seen as a security risk. Whether they’re more worried about her helping him escape or killing him, she has no idea. She has no idea which she’d prefer.

She’s read the transcripts, though. He seems so unfeeling on the written page, when she can’t look at him and see _Dexter_ , the brother she can’t remember life without, the person who’s shared so many of her best and worst life experiences. The man who’d saved her from Rudy, who’d kept her sane after Frank bled to death right in front of her eyes.

But he’s a killer. Just like Rudy, his biological brother. Just like the hordes of evil sons of bitches Frank had dedicated his life to catching. In a way there’s some solace in the thought that even Special Agent Rockstar hadn’t figured out Dexter.

Unless he had. Unless he had his suspicions. Why would he ever say anything to her? Maybe he’d just been biding his time, building a case, watching and waiting like had with Trinity…

 _Fuck_. She’s barely gotten out of bed and already she’s questioning everything she’s ever known.

Harrison should have preschool this morning, but she drops him off at Jamie’s apartment instead, with a good selection of toys. The press is all over this case, and although she doubts Harrison will remember much in a few years, there’s no way she wants him blinded by paparazzi and his photo on the front of all the major daily newspapers.

Dexter himself had gone through the trauma of losing a parent at a young age – a trauma that might’ve been just what turned Brian Moser into the Ice Truck Killer. Maybe some of these things are ingrained at birth, but she’s going to do all she can to protect Harrison.

The only thing she absolutely will not do is let everyone else protect her. LaGuerta has already suggested throwing Dexter to the wolves, cutting off all contact with him and having the department issue a statement on her behalf. Deb would have made some pointed comments about the way she’d defended Doakes even after his death… but she’d been blinded by tears at the time.

It’s a long walk into the cells, down sterile white corridors and through gate after gate. She’s talked to some crazy killers in her time, but none scares her like this does.

“The most successful killers seem perfectly normal,” Frank had told her once. He’d interviewed and studied and chased down hundreds of them over the years. “Charismatic, thoughtful, interesting… That’s only while they’re behind bars, of course. It’s almost impossible to tell what they really are when they’re just a son, a neighbor, a man you pass in the street.”

She’d met his gaze levelly, curious. “So how do you do what you do?”

“Witnesses. Forensic evidence. Luck.” He’d smiled back. “I _did_ say ‘almost’.”

She’d give anything for him to be here now, partly for his expertise, mainly as a warm, solid body she can hold onto.

Instead she’s alone. With him.

He looks different in the orange jumpsuit. Of course, anyone would. She’d expected more, though. That characteristic horror movie change in posture, the manic smile. Even some glowing demonic eyes wouldn’t surprise her too much.

Instead, he’s just Dex. Tired, unshaven, but Dex all the same.

“Hi,” he says as the gate clanks shut.

“You don’t have a lawyer. Shouldn’t you have a lawyer?”

Yeah, great. _That’s_ what she most wants to know.

Dexter pulls out a chair and sits down. “Do I need one?”

“Damn fucking _straight_ you need one.” She pulls out a chair too, but really she wants to pace and work out some of this furious energy without having to actually hit someone. “They’ve got you on who knows how many fucking counts of capital murder. And we all know you did it. The entire squad’s been taken over by bodies and evidence bags… It’s worse than the Bay Harbor Butcher.”

He looks up at her. Big, innocent puppy-dog eyes. “ Deb,” he says, “I _am_ the Bay Harbor Butcher.”

She breathes out. She sits down.

The Butcher’s crimes she can almost – _almost_ – accept, even though she’d devoted her entire life to trying to catch him at the time. He’d only killed people who were, at the very least, heavily suspected of being very, very bad people.

The new stuff might take more investigation. Not that she can excuse any kind of serial killer, even her own brother, but she’s taken lives, she’d let Number Thirteen go…

But there’s a line, and she’s here to draw it.

She leans in towards him. “Did you have _anything_ to do with Rita’s death?”

Dexter blinks. It’s not the immediate, forcefully sincere denial she’s been hoping for ever since she remembered that confession of “I did it” she’d put down to traumatized rambling at the time.

“Trinity killed her,” he says finally, faintly. “I… had no idea. But I put her in danger. I should’ve got rid of him sooner.”

“Sooner? Trinity’s dead?” By the end of this conversation she might be able to wrap up every outstanding murder case in her entire department. If it’s still her department.

Dexter nods.

“Where’s his body?”

“Bottom of the ocean, I hope…”

 _Fuck_. But she can’t dwell on the details, or the way he says everything so casually. Or the fact that his boat, site of many happy family fishing trips with the kids, has probably seen dozens of dead bodies.

“What about Lundy?”

Dexter’s brow furrows. “Lundy? What about him?”

“God help me, if you had _anything_ to do with…”

“I didn’t.” And that one she really does believe. Has to believe. Finding someone else to blame for Frank’s death might have made her feel better for a minute or two, but losing a brother in the process would have ripped her apart.

It almost seems as though she’s done, as though it’s good enough that he hadn’t killed the only two truly decent people she’s known who have died in the last few years. Where the _fuck_ have her standards gone?

Her cop instincts drag her back to the subject at hand. “So what the fuck happened to Doakes? You framed him?”

“I… yes, but I didn’t kill him.”

“Then who?”

“Lila.” Dexter must anticipate her next question, because he adds: “I killed her, though.”

She’s relieved, and then guilty for being relieved, and then…

Her hands grip the cool metal edge of the table. “ _Fuck_ , Dexter. Why?”

“She took an innocent life.”

“No, I mean, _why_ everything? Why kill anyone? How the fuck long has this been going on?”

“Always. As long as I can remember. It’s something inside me. Something I can’t change. But I’ve always tried to direct it toward doing good. Killing the guilty, not the innocent. Harry said-“

“Harry?” What the _fuck_? “Dad knew about this?”

Dexter’s met her eyes through all of this, and now he can’t look at her. “I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s not your fault. You shouldn’t have to remember him like… He was just trying to do what was best for me, Deb. Keep me out of the electric chair. He said if I have to do it, I have to be careful, I have to follow the code.”

She listens to his explanations without saying a word. How can she? Her mind is too busy reinterpreting her entire _life_ , from weekends Dad would blow off her desperate pleas for attention in order to spend time with Dex, to the time Dexter had saved her from Rudy’s murder table, wrapped in plastic.

He’s saved her life. He’s saved god knows how many lives, and avenged dozens of others. She’d argued to herself that letting Number Thirteen go was somehow all right on a moral scale, if not a legal one. She was a brutalized woman taking revenge on the men who had raped and abused her, and murdered twelve others. It would never have gone to trial, anyway. Who would convict someone like that?

But Dexter… He’s rarely, if ever, been in direct danger. It’s never been self defense.

“How’s Harrison?” Dexter asks after a long moment of silence.

She nods before she can summon the breath to speak. “He misses his Daddy. Aster and Cody want to come to Miami… I told their grandparents it wasn’t a good idea. Not now, anyway.”

Not ever. The only time they’re going to see him again is going to be in court, or behind thick plate glass. Harrison might grow up without even touching his father again.

She almost, _almost_ makes herself believe that it’s for the best. But she’s seen Dexter with all of them, seen how much he had suffered when Harrison had been in the hospital, when Aster had been missing, when all of the kids had been devastated after their mother’s death. And she’s seen him happy too, at everything from stupid chemistry lab results to the birth of his son.

“Many sociopaths adopt a persona, a mask, to convince even their own family members that they’re perfectly normal.” Frank’s voice again, echoing through her mind. “It’s nothing more than a simple disguise, but it fools almost everyone.”

Maybe it’s all been a lie. Maybe every single moment of it has been nothing more than an elaborate deception. But he’s her _brother_ , and if anyone should be fooled and deceived and fucking _like_ it, it’s her.

She pushes back the chair. “I’m getting you a lawyer.”

The confusion in his eyes gives her a strange kind of satisfaction. “Deb… I did it. I killed those people. Even if they were murderers, I know that’s no defense…”

“You’re right. It’s not.”

She stands up, already trying to think who would be the best psychiatrist to talk to him, the best lawyer to sell the defense to a court and a public baying for blood. It will mean dredging up Dexter’s earliest childhood memories, drenched in blood, witnessing his own mother’s murder. It might mean selling out her own father, painting him as a misguided cop training his son to kill. But Harry’s dead. His grandson is still alive, still with an entire life in front of him that should be filled with more than prison visits and shame.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she says, rapping on the gate to alert the guard. “ _Don’t_ fucking talk to anyone. Not Quinn, not Batista, not anyone. I’m getting you a lawyer, and we _are_ getting you out of here.”

Dex opens his mouth to form some sort of objection, but closes it almost immediately. He knows better to argue with her when she’s like this. He’s only a serial killer. She’ll take the entire city down if she has to, law and morality and good sense be damned.

Debra Morgan might just be the worst cop in the history of the world, but she’s still got half a chance at being Miami’s best ever sister.


End file.
